Quick Catchup Items: TSA, ROTC, Filibuster

By James Fallows

... to get these out of the inbox, and then offline:

1) Many people have sent in mentions of this story from Sacramento, about an airline pilot who posted a YouTube video of what he considered "security theater" aspects at an airport. (Thorough inspection of air crews; no inspection whatsoever of baggage handlers, maintenance people, and other ground crew.) A few days later federal agents and sheriff's deputies arrived at his house, and he is apparently under investigation and in trouble for disclosing "sensitive" security info.

A few weeks ago, the TSA actually apologized for the episode in which a young mother was detained in a glass security cube, and missed her plane, because she didn't want to send a container of breast milk through the X-ray machine. We'll see what the TSA administrator John Pistole says about this one.

2) Last month I quoted a software engineer, William Vambenepe, on why he wouldn't go through the advanced TSA scanning machines: not that he was prudish ("I'm French") but because his professional experience made him doubt that new radiation-producing machines with new software could be faultlessly safe. He writes today with this update:

>>My fears seem validated by this report that no-one is inspecting the machines and ensuring that they don't deliver 100x the normal radiation level. Choice quote: "While the TSA claims that entities like the FDA, the US Army and Johns Hopkins all regularly inspect their machines, none of these groups agrees, and they all disavow any role in regularly maintaining and testing the TSA's equipment".<<

3) Last week I said that the repeal of the military's DADT policy should pave the way for the return of ROTC programs to Harvard and some other elite universities. Michael Segal, of "Advocates for ROTC," writes a proposal, here, of how specifically this might take place.

4) A heartening end-of-year trend is new attention to abuses of the filibuster -- as the Atlantic's Josh Green points out here, and Ezra Klein here. When we wonder about dysfunction of the US government, it's worth realizing how much one person, Senator Mitch McConnell, has done to prevent the government from filling vacant judgeships and posts, considering economic and international legislation, and so on. If the historic extremes of this year -- in which McConnell oversaw the staging of 91 filibusters, or nearly four times as many as in the 1800s as a whole -- finally motivate Senators to reconsideration of the rules, there will have been some payoff.